Howard B. Leavitt ’43, a former educational consultant at the World Bank, catalogs the first interactions of indigenous peoples with European traders, explorers and settlers in a compilation of 42 globe-spanning, first-person accounts, First Encounters: Native Voices on the Coming of the Europeans (Greenwood).

John Merrow ’63, education correspondent for PBS NewsHour, exposes how mediocrity is rewarded in the public school system and what needs to change in Below C Level: How American Education Encourages Mediocrity—and What We Can Do about It (CreateSpace).

David Godine ’66 shares 40 years of experience publishing books and almost 200 titles that made a difference in Godine at Forty: A Retrospective of Four Decades in the Life of an Independent Publisher (David R. Godine).

Joseph Furstensthal ’67 gives both rookie and veteran wine-enthusiasts a comprehensive education on the Golden State’s wine industry as coauthor of The New Connoisseurs’ Guidebook to California Wine and Wineries (University of California Press).

Rabbi Nesanel (formerly Stephen) Kasnett ’67 of the Mesorah Heritage Foundation in Brooklyn coauthors a seven-volume translation and detailed explanation of a leading medieval Jewish scholar’s commentary on the Bible in Ramban: Commentary on the Torah (Mesorah Publications).

Berkeley professor Robert B. Reich ’68 tackles America’s economic climate and argues for wealth redistribution in his 12th book, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future (Knopf).

Frederic Craigie ’72, a faculty member at the Maine-Dartmouth Family Medicine Residency, explores the benefits of the integration of spiritual resources into medical treatment in Positive Spirituality in Health Care (Mill City Press).

University of Pittsburgh history professor George Reid Andrews ’72 reviews the history of Afro-Uruguayans, connecting their struggles to the broader issues of race, culture, gender and politics in Blackness in the White Nation: A History of Afro-Uruguay (University of North Carolina Press).

Donald Drakeman ’75, a partner at venture capital firm Advent Venture Partners and a politics lecturer at Princeton, casts light on the close relationship between religion and government in America and brings to life a fascinating parade of church-state constitutional controversies in Church, State, and Original Intent (Cambridge University Press).

Dinesh D’Souza ’83, president of the King’s College in New York City, argues that President Obama is attempting to sabotage America with his Afrocentrism in The Roots of Obama’s Rage (Regnery Press).

Bonnie An Henderson ’89, DMS’93, an assistant clinical professor at Harvard Medical School, details the surgical procedures used to correct astigmatisms in the second edition of A Complete Surgical Guide for Correcting Astigmatism: An Ophthalmic Manifesto (Slack).

Journalist James Zug ’91 showcases the talents of Trinity College men’s squash coach and co-author Paul Assaiante, the winningest coach in NCAA history, in Run to the Roar: Coaching to Overcome Fear (Portfolio).

Erika Meitner ’96 explores themes of motherhood, her Jewish ancestry and life in the slums of Washington, D.C., in Ideal Cities (Harper Perennial), which has received the National Poetry Series Prize.

Alfredo Batista must navigate a weekend in Queens fraught with worries, including the theft of a pit bull and a brother who has recently been released from jail, in Dogfight: A Love Story (Random House), the debut novel of Matt Burgess ’04.